Fool's Views (4/1 – 5/31) (Part 2 of 2)

All right! Back for round two!

My Steven Soderbergh extravaganza was inspired, in fact, by my recent viewing of David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis, where I thought, "I wonder if I can find Schizopolis as well." (Yes, this is how my mind works. You're just lucky I didn't also decide to pop in Fritz Lang's Metropolis and/or the Jim Wynorski documentary, Popatopolis.)

With regard to the half-dozen Kurt Russell flicks, that was born of a recent conversation with my good pal John Pata where we were talking about the recent Overboard remake starring Anna Faris, and I confessed that I had never seen the original with Himself and Goldie Hawn. I then went on to confess that I was pretty light on the Kurtiverse as a whole, and so rattled through IMDb and the Chicago Public Library shelves to see what all I could track down.

Here's the thing, though: I don't understand the mystique about Kurt. I find him to be completely capable yet hardly distinctive. I feel, with the exception of his features with John Carpenter (minus Escape from L.A., because ohmygodthatmovie), he's always doing his Kurt thing which I don't find all that interesting, much less A-list material. I find myself imagining other actors in the roles that he plays and that's never a good thing. I figured I must be missing something, but six more films under my belt (plus The Fate of the Furious, watched the first week in June) has done little to change my mind. Ah well.

As always, feel free to leave your two cents worth - we'll make sure you get some change back.

Enjoy!

Fool's Views (4/1 – 5/31) (Part 1 of 2)

Howdy folks!

Ahem. So, here’s what happened.

During the month of April, I was either a) enjoying a trip to Alaska with my lovely bride to celebrate 10 years of wedded bliss (and setting foot in the long-elusive 5 th state in my U.S. travels – yeah, been to ’em all now), b) memorizing lines for The Woman in Black, c) rehearsing Woman in Black, or d) commuting back and forth between Chicago and Rockford, IL (where WIB was being performed at Artists’ Ensemble Theatre). As a result, I saw a grand total of five, count ’em, five films the entire month. Even so, I had plans to write up that quintet and get them posted....

Then May came along and I was still commuting back and forth doing the show on the weekends, but I also had free time to be, oh, WATCHING movies again and given the choice, I’d always rather be watching than scribbling. As a result, I let the month roll by, even as the last few days of it saw me traveling to Barcelona, Spain for another happy reunion with my Enlightened Warrior Training Camp family (and logging another four movies en route) and a glorious couple weeks of watching folks shatter their personal barriers and go to the next level of their lives.

But here we are, halfway through the month and on the eve of starting rehearsals for yet another show (The Hero’s Wife at 16th Street Theatre), and it occurred to me that unless I put fingers to keypad, another month would be in the rearview with naught to show for it. Considering the wealth of flickers that rolled by (including mini-fests of Steven Soderbergh and Kurt Russell), I thought it would be a shame not to try to get something on the boards. By no means do I consider this to be my finest hour of critical contemplation; instead, consider it a fella just jotting down a few notes and sharing them with friends – more the beginning of the conversation than the final word.

As always, feel free to leave your two cents worth – we’ll make sure you get some change.

Enjoy!